Against all logic and reason, I occasionally find myself feeling some twinge of patriotism towards my homeland of the United States of America—albeit, usually in the context of “Criticizing its institutions so she can relieve herself of the guilt and malaise that has been laid upon her”.

On a similar note, while I do have a great deal of respect for the culture of the Russian Federation and its environs, I am not quite as enamored with Eastern Europe as some nameless manospherians are, with a few exceptions in some select areas.

Like most on Return of Kings, I despise communism in all its forms, and with just cause. However, having the interests and professional career that I have, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there were two things that the Soviet Union did very well—music and weightlifting.

The music is, of course, completely beyond the scope of this article (I’d recommend looking into the Alexandrov Ensemble myself), but weightlifting can be discussed in depth.

And so without further ado, here are four performance techniques of weightlifting that were developed either in the Soviet Union or in Former Soviet Union states, and can be immediately utilized in your lifting endeavors.

1. PNF Flexing

Also known as “proprioceptive neuromuscular function”, this is essentially where one flexes/squeezes as many muscles as possible in order to call even more muscle fibers into play. And the more muscle fibers that are involved in a lift will of course lead to a greater increase in strength. In fact, according to one of Russia’s greatest exports Pavel Tsatsouline, doing PNF can instantaneously make you capable of lifting another 5-10 pounds that you couldn’t before.

When you’re doing a lift, merely grip the bar as tight as you can, and clench the buttocks as hard as you can. This will cause irradiation (see below), force the other muscles of the arm and the lumbo-pelvic-hip-complex to maximally tense as well, giving you an overall increase in your muscular strength.

2. “Greasing the Groove”

In general, Olympic weightlifters seem to follow a pattern of high intensity/load, low reps, and moderate sets spaced throughout the day. Paradoxically, doing high repetitions can also provide some benefit to strength as well—not so much from increasing the strength of the muscles, but from training the central nervous system to be accustomed to the particular movement you are doing.

In other words, to develop strength, you can do a program of high repetitions and moderate weight, as this will train the central nervous system to become more “used to” the movement and thus easier for you.

However, a problem does arise from this—doing too many reps with a weight close to your maximum can lead to compensatory movements and thus injury (i.e., arching or twisting the back to achieve a lift, to cite just one example), and doing many reps with a light weight kind of defeats the purpose of strength training in the first place.

There is a way to both grease the groove to get the neural advantages of repeated sets AND develop strength as well, and it happens to be the next entry.

3. Drop Setting

Going back to Pavel Tsatsouline’s example, he does not refer to this technique by name, exactly, so much as he cheekily refers to it as something of a “Potemkin Village” of fitness. Namely, his Spetsnaz unit in Afghanistan had to occasionally impress military officers by putting on a show of Herculean musclemen that were ordered to specifically put on said show.

One of their tasks was to build their muscles to be as large—yet still functional—as possible, a goal that was achieved with drop setting.

To do this, begin with one set of your one rep maximum, with no more than 2-3 reps. Then drop 5 pounds and do another set of 2-3 reps. Then drop another 5 pounds. And another, and so on and so forth. You can literally do this exercise until you’re just lifting the bar. This technique trains both the one rep max and many repetitions, the only downside being that it does take a large amount of time to do

4. Cycling (not steroids!)

Also known as periodization, this is a technique in which you must do something that might seem a bit paradoxical. Once you have reached a plateau in training, lower the weight down to a light intensity, and start the cycle again.

Slowly, over a period of 8-10 weeks, you should get back to where you were before, and you just might find that you will set a new personal record.

70 Responses

Good tips. I’ve found that mixing a set of higher-rep, lower weight workouts into my monthly routine makes me develop strength faster. That’s essentially a built-in form of “cycling” combined with “greasing the groove”, and it works for me.

I’d appreciate it if you could opine on some homemade workout equipment popular with Soviet bodybuilders in the past. I’ve seen everything from makeshift deadlift equipment (steel rods with concrete or bucket weights) to inner tubes filled with heavy substances, and if you can enlighten as to which provide the most bang for your buck that could be useful.

Thanks. I’ve had to cut my gym membership for financial issues (cutting wherever I can to make each dollar go further), but between bodyweight exercises and just trying to strain my body I’ve managed to keep most of my strength intact (I think).

Pa was an amateur bodybuilder who worked 50 hours a week providing for his family and was still the biggest, non competing man I ever saw until around age 55.

With the exception of a Gold’s Multigym all of our stuff was scavenged or repurposed. Lot of the big plates were pieces of steel he had drilled to take a barbell, bench was made with a lathe and welded together, pull up bar and parallel bars were made from scaffolding bars, as for the squat rack it was a pair of adjustable truck axel stands!

All of this stuff is at least 30 years old with no sign of wearing out.

My weight bench and all the weights came from several different trash piles. The seat of the bench was rotted out but some scavenged plywood and a good, cleaning later, it is much like new. Same with the bars.
A gym certainly makes the routine easier, but being self reliable builds more character…at least that is what I keep telling myself.

I was travelling for several years and still am. At one point I had 3 lagging/cross-over gym memberships -> NYC/Miami/Montauk
Now I mostly do body weight, and few dumbbells…chin-ups/pushups/bentoover rowing/hill climbs.
Good enough for me, for now…

And for most chubby guys just starting out — push ups/chinups/walk/run
and stop the junk/packaged food…

Taignobias, I’d forgotten just how spoiled I am. Back when my son was still living at home, he really got into body building and even trophied at a local competition. So I found a Keys power cube complete with a Smith machine, two station cable system and safeties for squat / bench press along with over 500 lbs. of Olympic plates, bar and bench. I bought it all used for $1100. He got married, moved to town and couldn’t take it with him and I’ve had it ever since. It’s really nice to be able to get early, grab a cup of coffee and walk out the kitchen door into “the gym”.

Back when I was your age I used all kinds of make shift weights I scrounged. Working in an industrial environment I had access to pump shafts, orifice plates, all-thread, pipe and all manner of odd scrap I turned into dumbbells. Anything will work. I’m willing to bet if you get on line and check for free stuff in your area you’ll eventually find people giving away weights, benches and other fitness equipment. I’ve seen this stuff sitting on the curb for trash pick up before. Also check yard sales. A lot of times at the end of the day they are tired of looking at it and will practically give exercise equipment away to not have to take it back in the house.

Just to update you, I did a quick search on the Kansas City free section of Craigslist and immediately found a Spirit single stack multi-station weight machine in great shape for free. The people are moving and need it removed ASAP. I bet you that with a little persistence you could amass more gym equipment for free than you have room for, lol.

It bothers me how MLB is still denying Bonds and Clemens into the HOF, when other players getting improved their games and longevity just as much using roids. Clemens, as a person, and Bonds, with media, were both assholes, but they need to be in HOF.

Throw Canseco in there. He juiced some too to get to a certain level, and then dropped the anabolics and just maintained the gains. He’s a bit abrasive sometimes, but he’s mostly a nice guy who smacked the crap out of a baseball a record number of times.

Hell, to be honest, I’ve seriously considered taking Dianabol myself, just to get where I want to be and then maintain it… getting there naturally is a really slow, boring process… I don’t want to be a bodybuilder shredded speedo king or anything, but I work my ass off in the gym for gains, don’t lose much fat because I don’t like cutting hunger and muscle loss, and a round of D-bol would give me massive gains, which would cut fat metabolically, and get me probably triple the strength and muscle mass in a couple months than what I get now in a year…. I’m not getting any younger… faster is VERY attractive.

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The America-hater with a whopping 41 comments on Disqus speaks out. Way to generalize about a nation of 300 million, tinkerbell. A nation with some VERY tough dudes. And some are right here on ROK.
And feel free to stop using all the tech (internet, computer, car, tv, air travel, household appliances, medical technology, etc) invented by this “failed nation.”

Google is paying 97$ per hour! Work for few hours and have longer with friends & family! :!ao145d:
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Basically everyone in the Soviet Union and modern day Russia that competed in the Olympics took the juice. It was an important part of their training. Rather not take advice from juice heads, cause the same training would not work for natural body builders or power lifters. Remember you can literally sit around do nothing and be on juice and your gains will still be more than someone not on the juice on a somewhat decent workout plan.

I used to work with this huge Italian from New York. His name was James but he went by “Gym”. One day I walked up and grabbed his arm. I was shocked. It was huge alright, but it felt like mush. I always suspected he was juicing…

There’s something else worth considering. With steroids, a persons tendon and/or ligament strength either lags behind muscles when increasing in strength or never catches up to equal the muscles. A body with good strength without steroids is more substantive than a strong body on steriods.

Drop setting has an important drawback. It is a high intensity technique that will tax your body in a way that you will need extended recovery time. Not only the muscles but the joints and tendons will be severely stressed out. Pros don’t do them every session but once in a while between regular sessions.

I dunno… I do drop sets every day, but it’s chest day, back day, leg day routine, so each group gets 2 days rest and I take a day off… I’ve been gaining pretty steadily with it for over a year now with only 1 small injury due to me loading an incline leg press a tad too heavy and squishing myself. Other than that, no noticeable issues, and I’m 39 years old now.

Drop setting is priceless. Bass player in my old band a few decades back, entered the Marines. During basic he quickly became the platoon leader. During the gauntlet and 1-2-1 combat practice, he wrestled 3 platoons and beat every single guy. He was a state champ wrestler I might add, and said the only guy who was a challenge was none other than another state champ wrestler. You read that right, back-2-back, he wrestled as I recall him telling me 72 guys. Fucker beat every last on of them, then passed out for an hour due to exhaustion.

He told me his state champ team in high school did EVERY lift drop setted to bar weight only. In fact, that was the primary method they used for lifting. Much like the need for GrecoRoman wrestling or old-school Jiu Jitsu matches.. unlimited fight time until a winner prevails, he trained the way he fought.
I’ve seen him (in bar fights) pick up bouncers in the 260-280 Lb. range over his head and toss them like bitches. Literally no one in our city fucked with him after that. Drop set strength right there.

His recruit company must have been composed of women. Jon Jones is the best MMA of all time and he wouldn’t make it past 20 well conditioned combatants. My ODA used to do a one minute/round gauntlet like that and once in a while a guy could make 8.

Believe what you will. I bore witness to enough to believe it. He said 1 0f 10 were immediate pins, or tap outs. Greco and Catch style wrestling is brutal as fuck mats or not. We’re also talking the 1990s when the country wasn’t pussified yet. The sound of bones and bodies bouncing off pavement has a way of reordering an aggressor’s priorities. We played a show where a massive fight broke out outside the club as I was loading my drums in a suburban. Bass player warded off a ton of guys and kept the equipment safe single-handedly. 27 people got hauled off in paddy wagon and cop cars that night, the whole mob was 50-60 deep, an all our bar brawl that got pushed outside. I’m not here to bullshit.

I’m not sure whether to believe these stories like picking up and tossing bouncers. If that city is a small village with one bar where everyone hangs out then I can understand how that could happen but it just amazes me how readers are supposed to be witness to these amazing feats that would most likely also land them in the slammer or get them killed but in these stories it’s just fun and games. Every now and then you also hear martial arts people talking about how they make 300 pound bodybuilders quite after their first lesson as if it’s somehow normal to do hard and harmful sparring on someone’s first day in. In those cases I can smell the BS from a mile away, because training does not work that way and finding people that big and strong is difficult enough in itself.

Guys who know nothing about grappling also don’t think about protecting their arms. They just put them out there where you can easily tie them up into a half nelson or chicken wing. In my one real fight as an adult the other guy punched me in the face HARD to start the thing, hard enough that I saw stars and my knees buckled. He was stronger than me and a better striker too, but once it went to the ground I tied up his arms and his strength and striking ability didn’t help him any.

Nice work. I can say this much, my old friend, bassist, would just instantly have you in some sort of hold, control your center of gravity, and you’d either be flying through the air, pinned on the ground with bones starting to splinter, or a Judo type throw. The thing about UFC, High school Greco, or any of that, is the ref is always there to stop the “finishing move.” When you see or feel the finishing move with no ref there to stop it, you realize just how deadly trained fighters really are… I think a lot of dudes who are trained want to know what it feels like to really fuck someone up with their skills, and cross to the darkside and aimlessly attack people to feel tough.

I’ve been leveled twice. Both times sucker punches with no escalation… just targeted in a bar by assholes. Once completely shit faced, knees buckled, stayed standing, then the fade to black started, I grabbed a guy, literally blind blacked-out seeing stars and put the wrong dude in a head lock until I came to stand the whole time. It took a few minutes to see again. That was scary as hell. The guy ran off never to be found. I remember talking to my buddy right before it happened, someone bumped me in the back pretty hard, before turning around to see who did it, I told my friend sitting 3 bar stools away from me in a bar our friends owned in a college town with a band playing; “Hey I think this dude behind me might be fucking with me !”, I went to turn to see who it was, next thing I saw was my blood streak across my buddy’s face from about 6-7′ away.. I think I actually got hit so hard I passed out and woke up at the same time, like my brain was telling me my body was trying to be killed. Crazy.

The other time, I’m pissing at a urinal, a dude about 325 Lbs 5’11” come up behind me, kidney jabs me, I turn around trying to put my dick away while pissing all over myself, 2 gut punches to the spine bent me over, think he broke a rib, then he worked me over with about 3-4 hay makers / uppercuts. I woke up on the bathroom floor then had to piece together what happened after talking to 5-6 people at the bar. Other than that, only grazed in the face a few other times. 2 weeks later same guy tried to square of with someone at a house party, got a 5th of JD smashed over his head and stomped to shit with lots of stitches and a hospital visit.

I’ve seen that video and I think it does not necessarily prove everything it’s supposed to prove. The bodybuilder was shorter and thus had a reach and leverage disadvantage and he held on for very long in an environment that catered to the strengths of the BJJ guy. In a train, bus, crowded building, stair case or an elevator the bodybuilder could have come out on top. Once you introduce uneven surfaces, injuries, odd objects and limited space the game changes a fair bit and lots of techniques go out of the window. In comparison, the BJJ guy would have been laughed out in a second on bodybuilding stage or in the gym instead of putting up a fight for minutes like the bodybuilder did in a sport that was completely alien to him. I know it’s now considered taboo to state these facts as defending weights and bodybuilng is considered ignorant in an age where MMA is the biggest fad sport among young men and women and the measuring stick of masculinity.

I’ve heard accounts favouring both sides but generally speaking in a ring environment the kickboxer or thaiboxer would certainly have the upper hand if the size difference is not overwhelming. Leg kicking a much bigger opponent would not necessarily be very effective even though it’s a staple of thai boxing.

That’s not surprising. I was a mediocre high school wrestler, but I can still throw most guys around because most guys don’t even know the basics of grappling. Saved my life in the only real fight I’ve ever been in as an adult.

Easy life makes men weak and women indulge in their dark side. Hardship was the main reason why Eastern Europeans were (some still are) stronger and more masculine than the Westerners. Now Eastern Europe is on its path to feminization because they have fully embraced Western civilization.

The main goal of civilization is to make life easier and more secure because it is feminine in its nature. FEMALENESS is a contagious disease and it spreads like a virus. Civilization is cancerous.

Living in the Third World, in general probably does a lot to make one tough.
I still hear my dad talk about his father jumping up, pinching a rough cut 2×12 hanging beam and doing a pull-up.
Pretty sure we lose manliness every generation.

Crossbred livestock are always healthier than pure-breeds. I recall from my agricultural training in school that cross breeding produces superior offspring, just not ones with any certain phenotype.
Look at dogs; mutts live forever and pure-breeds die much earlier from known, bred-in defects.
Am I missing something?

I once replied to a post calling mixed-race children mentally impaired freaks asking for evidence. Poster replied with a picture of Elliot Rodger, literally the only mixed-race mass murderer I can think of. I replied asking him if that was James Holmes or ‎Seung-Hui Cho. He didn’t get it.

Another good method is to lock yourself away in a controlled compound. Workout 7 days a week and give yourself only two days a month for free time. Have controlled access to media, phones, mail etc. This is how the Red Army hockey team achieved much success. They were imprisoned in gyms and ice rinks.

Great stuff. Segue…Im recovering from Pes Ansirenus bursitis (google it) and a proper exercise therapist physio (not the the other kind that plug you into machines) taught me isometrics (again). Holding 1/2 squats, 1/2 leg press, 1/2 leg ext for 45 seconds is fierce and then mixing it with single leg squats and heavy low rep deep squats has made my muscles (leg and butt) feel thicker and stronger very quickly whilst gaining fast improvements of the Pes pain (never disappears quickly – can take 12 months). One study quotes isometrics as good as taking non steroidal anti inflammatories.

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